1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a refrigerator, and more particularly, to a refrigerator from which supercooled beverage is supplied through a dispenser installed in a door.
2. Description of the Related Art
A refrigerator is an apparatus for supplying chilled air generated in a refrigerating cycle to a compartment such that a variety of food is maintained fresh for a long time. When temperature of the compartment is adjusted properly, beverages can be maintained in a supercooled state, and a user can use the supercooled beverage to make a beverage not completely frozen or not completely melted (hereinafter, referred to as ‘slush’).
Although the beverage is generally changed to a solid phase when its temperature is under its freezing point temperature at standard atmospheric pressure, occasionally, the beverage is not changed into the solid phase but is maintained in the supercooled state. As such, if liquid is not frozen even when it is below the freezing point and remains in the supercooled state it is in what is known in thermodynamics as in a metastable state. Since the supercooled liquid in the metastable state is neither unstable nor stable, when there is ambient perturbation, the supercooled beverage undergoes a phase transition to the solid state. Thus, when either a shock or vibration is applied to the supercooled beverage or an ice nucleus such as ice is inserted into beverage in the supercooled state, the beverage can be changed into the slush in which liquid and solid are mixed.
In connection with this, recently a supercooling apparatus capable of supercooling beverage and of maintaining the same in supercooled state is proposed. As an example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-214753 discloses a supercooling apparatus installed in a main body of a refrigerator such that the temperature of a compartment for accommodating food is uniform and food is refrigerated. However, since conventional research is focused on precise control of the compartment in view of controlling the supercooling apparatus or in view of structure, it is lacking in that a user can make slush beverages conveniently.
Naturally, if the supercooled beverage is prepared, the user can make the slush beverage in various ways without serious effort. For example, there may be various ways of putting ice serving as an ice nucleus into the supercooled beverage contained in a vessel or of shaking and impacting a sealed vessel containing the supercooled beverage. However, the former has a disadvantage of preparing ice independent from supercooling the beverage, and the latter has a disadvantage that a user cannot make as much as desired slush from the supercooled beverage.
Further, since the conventional supercooling apparatus must open a door thereof for taking out the supercooled beverage, a large quantity of chilled air in the compartment must be discharged out of the refrigerator whenever the user makes the slush beverage. In a point of view that temperature of the compartment is precisely controlled for the supercooling of the beverage, loss of the chilled air lowers the performance of the supercooling apparatus.